Transgender Citizens: The Non-existent Existential Threat to America

Trump’s executive order regarding sex and gender identifies “gender ideology” as an existential threat to America, or as it says, “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact … on the validity of the entire American system.” To combat the threat, the executive order required that “gender ideology”, defined as a belief system that “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, and … includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex …” be erased from all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages. The executive order was immediately followed by a ruthless and extensive purge. Entire departments of the federal government were shut down to allow for documents and websites to be cleansed of threating word or phrases, such as “transgender.”

Notably, the executive order did not directly identify transgender people, or others who do not fit into Trump’s tidy definition of two immutable sexes determined at conception, themselves as threats. Most likely because the regime denies that such people exist. At best, as reflected in the language of another charming executive order, such a person is simply deluded, a liar, a believer in a demonstrably false idea or group of ideas, someone who lacks honor.

What the regime says it is trying to erase is an idea.

The sex/gender executive order acknowledges that this idea may be expressed through actions, such as changing gender markers on passports. But those actions have nothing to do with actual transgender people, who cannot and do not exist. The actions are mere expressions of ideology, one laughably without merit. Yet simultaneously, an idea so dangerous that none may be allowed to speak it or hear it, lest the entire county fall.

To suppress the idea, the regime began to erase words that might be used to express gender ideology, like “transgender” or “gender non-conforming.” In its zeal, the regime also erased mention of people who may have identified as, or even simply speculated to have been transgender or non-conforming. For example, Pauli Murray was removed from the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site of the National Park Service webpage. There is little evidence on the archived website that Pauli Murray expressed “gender ideology” during her lifetime. The site includes a small discussion about how Murray may have seen her gender, and a short postscript about what pronouns should be used to refer to her in light of the scant record of how she saw herself. The bulk of the website discussed Murray’s remarkable life as a lawyer, activist and Episcopal priest.

Why erase Pauli Murray, if she herself was not expressing gender ideology, at least not in any public way? The website states she may have privately described herself as “he-she,” but does not elaborate more. Murray may have just been describing herself as not being especially feminine, without advocating for departure from Trump’s “reality” of two immutable sexes determined at conception.

Similarly, the regime took to the National Park Service’s website memorializing Stonewall erase any mention of transgender or queer participants. Again, there is no indication that the Stonewall participants were advocating gender ideology at Stonewall, even if they may have identified as transgender or non-conforming in their personal lives or even publicly in other contexts. The protesters were opposing police harassment and brutality. Of course, the harassment was due to the sexual orientation and gender identity of the bar patrons, and the protest was led by icons who at least were transgender/nonconforming adjacent. But one can protest brutality and harassment without advocating gender ideology. There is no record that any participant took a bullhorn and shouted that there may be more than two genders or that gender may be mutable. Apparently, the mere description of participants as transgender or queer counts as expression of gender ideology, because it acknowledges that such people exist. But seriously, why not simply amend the website to clarify that some protesters “erroneously thought” they might be transgender or queer?

And thus, the regime gives away the game. While denying that transgender and nonconforming people exist, they are sought out to be erased. How can something that doesn’t exist be erased? Why would the regime invest such resources to hunt quarry that is as fantastical as Bigfoot?

Of course, this is the point of the executive order. To shut down the idea of gender ideology, a person embodying it must be erased, silenced, even criminalized. Not for expressing an idea alone, but for existing. A transgender person may have never sought to change his marker or taken steps to change his body (apparently, like Pauli Murray.) And yet, Murray was found and erased. Was it simply because the website acknowledged that someone (who existed) might have questioned her gender?

Even in the McCarthy era, those who detested the idea of communism at least acknowledged that they were hunting communists. Communists existed. They could be found and their lives destroyed.

During the Lavender Scare, likewise, gay and lesbian servicemembers were believed to exist. The trick was sometimes in the finding of them, as if they were deeply hidden and never spoke about their loves or desires, how could one know? But those seeking to purge them did not deny the reality of their quarry.

Where is communism without communists? Or Nazism without Nazis?

What is gender ideology without transgender, intersex, nonbinary, genderqueer or other nonconforming people?

Should the regime find me, perhaps after criminalizing the expression of gender ideology or for actions that would reflect that (such as obtaining a court order changing my gender), what would be my defense? We don’t generally throw people in jail for being deluded, especially when the delusion is flamboyantly unbelievable. And if I was genuinely delusional, how could I have the necessary intent to deceive in order to be found civilly liable for fraud, much less to held criminally liable?

Given that at least some of the impetus behind the executive order and subsequent purges is a certain form of Christianity, will the regime offer a path to redemption? May I simply confess that my sex is how Trump defines it? Will I be granted absolution and continue to live my life as Miles, without the concessions previously granted by the state?

I think not. The regime knows full well that transgender and others outside its narrow definitions exist and appears intent on using everything in its power to change that. An idea alone may be powerful enough to threaten a regime, but that same idea embodied in a human being may be powerful enough to bring it to its knees.

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